The crisis of Pentecost and the significance of the Holy
Spirit. We are much too far advanced now, and have covered
much too much ground to do anything adequate in the nature of
review and synopsis. But, for the sake of friends who have
joined us now for the first time, I will as quickly as
possible indicate where we are today; not going back further
than this morning.

Today we are seeing that what the book which goes by the name
of "Genesis" in the Old Testament is to the material
creation - as the book of beginnings and a multiplicity of
beginnings - the book of "Acts" in the New Testament is to the new
creation in Christ Jesus. In the former, spiritual principles
are wrapped up in natural ways and means. In the latter, those
principles are brought out nakedly; here we have the spiritual
principles of all God's works and God's purpose, laid bare.
The new creation follows along the line of the old in
principle, from step to step, stage to stage, and this morning
we considered three of those movements in the old as
illustrating and representing those in the new creation in
Christ.

We began with the first words: "In the beginning God...". And
we spent some time with that in the book of the Acts. The book
of the Acts is a new intervention of God in the history of
this world, and what we have there is the encounter with God,
not just in material things, symbols, and representations and
figures, but in direct spiritual reality in the power of the
Holy Spirit. Our emphasis in that connection was laid upon
this: that the coming of the Holy Spirit, the presence of the
Holy Spirit, the advent of the Holy Spirit, the meaning of
Pentecost, is to bring a new and mighty registration of God
upon this world. And that is not only a state­ment of truth,
it is a test of life; a test of whether we, individually and
collectively, both locally and universally, are really living
in the good of the advent of the Holy Spirit. Is the impact,
the registration, the effect, the influence, the sense
that God is present, God is here, God is with us? So it was in
this "second Genesis". Men thought they were dealing with men,
and so they threw them into prison. They martyred them, they
persecuted them. They thought they were dealing with a new
movement, religion, system, and cult; they treated it as such,
and then they encountered God, and found, as Gamaliel said,
that they were not fighting men, and not fighting a system of
truth, they were fighting against God.

The very first significance, then, of the new creation in
Christ, is: God is here - not in forms, not just in
instrumentalities as of the Old Testament - but is here
personally, actually, directly, immediately. God is here. And
we have to reckon with God, but we also have to enjoy God - it
works both ways. That is the first thing in both creations:
"In the beginning God".

The second thing we noted and dwelt upon was the brooding
Spirit. "The Spirit of God brooded upon the face of the
water." We pointed out that it was not just an abstract,
indefinite brooding... it was in purpose, in anticipation, in
what we might call a tension, that something had got to
happen, something must be done with this situation, this is
not what God intended... this state of things is contrary to
the mind of God and the Spirit is there in that mood,
brooding, hovering over something that can never satisfy God.

We come to the book of the Acts, we have a period - it may
seem a brief one, ten days, the end of the forty - when there
was a kind of parenthesis. The atmosphere is full of
expectation. Something's going to happen, something must
happen, we are tarrying for it to happen... not just being
told that something would happen and going for a walk, waiting
for it to happen, but tense, concentrated. The Spirit is
brooding. There is going to be something. We spent quite a
time with that and what it meant and then we went on to the
third thing: the Divine fiat, "And God said, Let light be. And
there was light".

And coming over to the book of the Acts we saw how, with the
Day of Pentecost and the Advent of the Holy Spirit, the
darkness fled, the darkness even over the minds of those
present. For indeed they had been fumbling in the dark, in the
mystery, in the perplexity, wondering what all this meant:
this crucifixion, and death, and resurrection. It was all so
strange. It needed an explanation, a mighty explanation. They
needed to come into the real meaning of it all and there they
were. The Spirit came, and immediately, the first thing that
happened was that the Bible flew open with new light. Peter
standing up with the eleven took up his Bible, it was a new
book. He had never seen before, he never could have behaved as
he had behaved, if he had seen the meaning of the Cross, that
"by the foreknowledge and predeterminate counsel of God" all
that had happened. Now he says it! He has got the inner side
of the Cross which he had never seen, or he could never have
denied his Lord if he had known and seen that. So he takes up
his Bible with Joel and with David, and in that wonderful
discourse, he opens up the Scriptures as the Lord had opened
them to the disciples, he is doing that now under the rays of
this new light which had broken... God had said, "Let light
be!" and light was! Well, that carries very much more with it
than we are now repeating, I am only indicating the lines we
have taken.

Now, this afternoon we will go as far as we can with more of
this. We come to the fourth great fact in this parallel
movement. The fourth fact was

The Separation of Heaven and Earth.

That was one of the first acts of God. Heaven and earth had
lost their distinctiveness, they were all mixed up in the
chaos. You could not tell which was which. Heaven had come
down and enshrouded the earth, and the earth had become
beclouded, and it is all there: one indefinite mass. And the
Lord said: "We must separate these two things. We must clearly
define these two realms, and we must put each in its place.
What belongs to heaven must be put there, and what belongs to
earth must be put there, and there must be a firmament
between; a dividing sphere or realm, a division between heaven
and earth.

We come over to the book of the Acts and to the New
Testament. May I just here say, by way of getting your minds
clear on a matter, that the four Gospels which are bound into
our volume of the New Testament before Acts, were not written
before Acts. The point is that we have a lot in the Gospels
which is illustrative in the life of the Lord Jesus of the
spiritual things in the book of the Acts. Now you're going to
see that, at least in one connection, in a moment.

Here, then, with this movement, this act, this defining act
of God, the door opens and there comes in all the teaching
that we have in the New Testament on the difference between
the heavenly and the earthly; if you like, between the
natural and the spiritual mind. And you, my dear friends, I am
quite sure realise to some degree a great, great deal of
trouble for want of discrimination between those two things:
the putting of those two things apart and into the place to
which they belong and knowing what belongs to this realm, and
what belongs to that realm. There must be, in the ordaining
and ordering and act of God, a firmament or an expanse
between heaven and earth. Until that is so, it's still
confusion... it's still confusion.

The inability to distinguish and to discrim­inate here is the
cause of almost untold trouble and difficulty. A great example
is in the third chapter of the Gospel by John; a wonderful
illustration of this very thing: Nicodemus. Nicodemus...
what was the final summing up by the Lord of His talk with
Nicodemus? In what way did it all head up? What was the
verdict that the Lord passed finally upon Nicodemus? "If I
have told you earthly things, and you have not understood,
what if I shall tell you heavenly?" That is a summing up of
everything. Here is a man with a great deal of intelligence, a
great deal of education, a great deal of influence in the
earth, even religiously. A man who would know his Bible, the
Old Testament, very thoroughly; would be fully acquainted with
all the movements of history, especially the history of his
own people, Israel. A man who is a representative of the
fullest of what is earthly in a religious way, fumbling in the
dark... wandering in the shadows, feeling out and groping for
something like a blind man.

Jesus, in speaking to him about being born from above as the
fundamental necessity for the beginning of understanding of
heavenly things, says, in effect: "These are two realms and
you've got them all mixed up. You're all mixed up; all in a
muddle. You're in the dark, Nicodemus, until there takes place
something in you from heaven, a new birth. That which
is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
spirit is spirit; until that latter takes place, you will not
have a glimpse or a glimmer of the meaning of heavenly
things." There's an example. There are, of course, many others. Many
others, and when you come into the book of the Acts, you've
got them: case after case of men who had inherited and been
brought up in the fullness of the old order and the
old teaching who are completely in the dark!

The Ethiopian
eunuch had been up to Jerusalem to the temple, to the very
headquarters of all that; been up. No doubt, as he quite
evidently was a seeker, a seeker... a man in quest of
something, and leaving Jeru­salem and returning, having not
found what he went for, still a man in the dark... the Spirit
takes action. That's the focal point: the Spirit takes
action, the Holy Spirit, "The Spirit said unto Philip,
Go, join yourself to this chariot". Now, note what happened.
The man was reading in the prophecies of Isaiah, chapter 53.
He has got it, he has got the Bible, he has got what you might
call "the very heart of things", so far as the letter is
concerned. Philip, by the Spirit, says, "Understandest thou
what thou readest?" - that's the point.

There's all the difference between reading the Bible and
understanding what you are reading in the light, the illumination
of the Holy Spirit - they're two different things, two
different worlds. You may read the Bible and be in one world
and then you may read it again and be in another world
altogether. And the poor fellow in the dark says, "How can I,
except somebody teach me?" Taking up the same Scriptures,
Philip preached unto him Jesus. And the Holy Spirit
shot in and created the space between, put things where they
belonged, gave this wonderful revelation. Philip must
have taken him a long way, must have taken him a long way with
Isaiah 53. I doubt whether ever you have heard a sermon on
believers' baptism preached on Isaiah 53. Philip evidently did
that, for spontaneously the man said, without any reference in
the narrative to baptism, "Here's water; what doth hinder me
to be baptised?" Philip had evidently instructed him that that
One of Isaiah 53 had died for him, and as him, representing
him in death and in burial, under the judgment of God. He must
have taken him a long way and the man evidently, although it
is not said, must have said, "Oh, I see, I see! I have been
all mixed up over this thing. I have been all in a fog over
this, now I see! It is clear; heavenly things have become
real." The things of heaven now were clear to him. Do you see
the point, without my dwelling long upon it?

The condition of Nicodemus, or this man, or any other, and
perhaps a more outstanding example of this very thing was Saul
of Tarsus... any man, if any man knew the earthly side of things
religious, he did. He did. He is a man in the dark, isn't he?
He afterward repeatedly said things which clearly indicated
how he knew that until heaven broke in, he was a man in the
dark. He said, "It pleased God to reveal His Son in me, it
pleased God to reveal His Son in me." It is only another way
of saying: "When God broke in, when Christ broke in, He put
things in their right place and showed me that all that, all
that was simply, after all, earthly knowledge. Religious it
might be, it was all earthly knowledge. It was simply my natural
ability to handle and deal with the Word of God, and
what a mess I made of it all!" But now, by cutting in between
the natural and the spiritual, and putting them in their
place, what a tremendous difference it makes! One is lifeless,
the other is living.

Now, what does this mean? Well, just this: that a mark of
true spirituality (which is only saying of a life governed by
the Holy Spirit) is this ability to discriminate
between things that are earthly and of man, and things which
are heavenly and of God. And having said that, dear friends, I
have said a momentous thing, if I may say it; a far more
important thing than I fear you may recognise, because it's
just here that there is so much of the trouble. There is,
(listen!) there is as big a difference here amongst
Christians, as there is between non-Christians and Christians.

Christianity today is very largely divided between what is
called "liberals" and "conservatives", "modernists" and
"fundamentalists", they claim that these two are poles
asunder. Well, maybe! But what I am saying is this: that there
is just as big a difference between many evangelical
or fundamentalist Christians, and spiritual people.
Because you believe in the deity of Christ, the virgin birth,
the atoning death, the bodily resurrection, the coming again
personally, the inspiration of the Scriptures, and so on, that
does not make you a spiritual man or woman. You can have all
that, and be a most unspiritual person in life and in
behaviour.

Yes, you may be a... to use the term "fundamentalist" of the
most rabid kind, and still be an unsanctified and unspiritual
man or woman. There is a big, big gap even there between the
earthly and the heavenly. And one of the things that makes for
a spiritual person, or characterises a spiritual
person, is the ability to discriminate between the things that
differ. That's a Pauline phrase, isn't it? "The things that
differ". And his whole first letter to the Corinthians is
based upon that. What chaos! What a mess at Corinth! What
confusion! What contradiction! What ineffectiveness! What
weakness! What shame! Why? The natural mind had come into the
church and had taken hold of things spiritual and brought them
down there to that level. The whole effort of the apostle is
to bring the Cross in to cut clean
between the natural mind and the spiritual mind. And he
says, "He that is spiritual discerneth all things". Have you
grasped this? Really, this is what happened on the Day of
Pentecost with these men. They were very earthly up to that
point although very devoted religiously, but the Holy Spirit
cleft a way between soul and spirit, between the earthly and
the heavenly, between the natural and the spiritual. And if
you will take this as a key, you will find so much in your New
Testament.

The Lord Jesus used the parabolic method because of this very
thing. He said to His disciples: "Unto you it is given
to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to the
rest it is not given." Insight, discernment, understanding,
discrimination - a faculty, Holy Spirit given, to know really
what is heavenly and what is not heavenly, what is earthly.
Today Christianity is an awful mix-up of the world with
religious things, with Christian things. The two things have
over-shadowed one another, and most Christians don't know the
difference.

Have I said enough on that matter? You see, the great
principle enunciated at the beginning in the material is here
laid bare and enforced in the spiritual, in the dispensation
of the Spirit. Under the aegis of the Spirit, the government
of the Spirit, there is always a clear distinction,
discrimination, and division between what is heavenly and what
is earthly. And if you haven't got it in your life, you've no
testimony. If you are mixed up with what is here as a
Christian, you know quite well there is no impact from
your life upon your surroundings. You are neutralised, as
things were before God separated between heaven and earth.

Now, that may be all very mysterious to some of you,
especially younger ones, but if you can't understand it and
grasp it, don't just dismiss it as of no meaning, if you are
going on in a life in the Spirit, you will learn. The Spirit
will tell you in your own heart: "Look here; that belongs to a
realm to which you don't belong as a child of God. Leave it
alone! Leave it alone." He will also say: "Look here, this
is the thing that is to your good, to your profit, this is
where you should go, where you should be, what you should do,
for your spiritual well-being." He will be making the
difference for you in your own heart. Oh, for lives and
churches, so governed by the Spirit that there is no mixture
and confusion, and thereby, neutralising of real
effectiveness.

Well, that's too long on one thing, isn't it? Let's come to
the next. And I think I will just have to mention this and
pass on, because I want to say much more about it, probably in
the evening.

The next thing that comes in the order, the all-governing
fact:

The Placing of Man in His Position.

I will just mention it, you will recall that man was the
crown and the centre of everything in the creative intention
of God. In the New Testament it is like that. May I leave it
for the time being so as not to spoil it for want of time,
because it is of such primary importance, while I go on to the
next thing in this movement.

We have got so far: man is in his place, and the Man in His
place is the key to everything. The next:

The Adversary.

Now you see, it's very difficult not to stay with that other
thing in the book of the Acts, but it's perfectly clear that
the Man is in His place when you come into the book of the
Acts - the Man is in His place - the Centre and the
key of everything is there. We will leave Him there for the
moment.

Then, the adversary. The Adversary, as his name implies: the
adverse person. Adverse to all this of God, to God; to
God. Adverse to light. Adverse to order - the god of
confusion. Adverse to everything, and concentrating his
adversity upon the Man. Well, that's perfectly clear. The Man
is in His place, the Holy Spirit comes and constitutes, in the
beginning, this one hundred and twenty, a corporate expression
of the Man - Christ in corporate representation and expression.
As Paul puts it, "one new Man".

The next movement is against the Man in heaven and the Man
here, as represented in the corporate company. A move to
destroy, a move to spoil, the move to ruin the new
creation as he did the old. And what a move! The book of the
Acts is, as you well know, just one long and very full account
of the many-sided and malicious activities of the adversary.
It is almost fascinating to watch the serpent and his
movements. Sometimes subtle, coming round as an angel of
light, sometimes poising to strike with his venom. But there
he is, watch him! Right up to this beautiful, beautiful point:
"And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching, in
fellowship, in breaking of bread, and in prayers". And the
Adversary says, "I will destroy that! I'll ruin that! I'll
spoil that!" And Ananias and Sapphira become his tools. We
have the terrible story of the breaking into that circle, that
fellowship, that organic life, of something calculated to
disrupt and disintegrate, and bring in death, death, death.
The striking of death right into the heart of it.

And I am not going to take you through the book, you know it,
but you think again: you see the Adversary at work on this New
Creation, to bring it to ruin. He seems to stop at nothing.
All right, but what do we see? What do we see? You
see, as we've said, here's the encounter with God! Oh, thank
God, dear friends, that in this dispensation God has committed
Himself, involved Himself, and has come into His church to
meet this force of evil. And although the church will feel the
blows, believers will know the pressure of this spiritual
antagonism, the upshot of every onslaught, the upshot of every
onslaught is that the Lord has the situation and the issue in
His hands. He does! I am tempted to take up instances of it -
the book is full of it. Through, through that satanically
energised and inspired Herod, satan struck at the church, and
struck at a very, very vital point in the church when he
struck at Peter. But heaven is interested in this and Herod,
and the one who inspires and energises him, has got to reckon
with God. The issue is all the worse for Herod!

But the book resolves itself into this: God moves, satan
countermoves, and God makes the final move, every time. That
is because God is involved in this matter with His
people; God has committed Himself to His church.
Pentecost means that! The coming of the Spirit just means God
has committed Himself, God has come out, and God has, in
effect and in act, said, "This is My business. This is My
affair. Touch this, you touch Me; fight this, you fight Me."

And who shall say, difficult as it may be viewing the whole,
nevertheless, who shall say that that initial, that original
interference of satan in the garden was not taken hold of by
God to bring in something greater than ever would have been
perhaps, and that something greater is grace. Grace! If man
had never fallen to satan, grace would never have been in the
dictionary. I say it's difficult to say that in the light of
all that grace means, and all that there is that demands
grace. Nevertheless, grace is the most wonderful thing that
has ever been revealed to man, and it could only come by
satan's interference. It's a way of putting things, but it's
the key to so much in this book of the Acts. Suffering, yes.
Satan made them suffer, but they learned marvellous heavenly
lessons through their sufferings, and they grew wonderfully
spiritually through satan's activities. The apostle who was
one of those in this book who was an outstanding instance
himself of this very thing, could write later on: "I
would have you know that the things which befell me have
fallen out for the furtherance of the Gospel". When you
consider the things that befell him, you can see satan's hand
very clearly at work for his undoing, for his destruction, but
they have fallen out for the furtherance of the Gospel. It's
all right, the Holy Spirit is in charge.

Now, dear friends, with one brief word on one other thing, we
will leave it for this afternoon. The next thing in this
movement was:

The Great Fact of Expansion.

You see it's a movement. The next thing in the Genesis record
is that satan has interfered and has done his evil work, but
he has not defeated God's end. A wonderful expansion is going
to take place over the earth, the horizon presses back - you
can see here far distances, things open up which are far
beyond the limits of that garden and its wall or its hedge.
And out from that concentration of Divine work the whole earth
will be filled, replenished, provided for; its fruit will
expand, increase, and will grow unto the ends of the earth. If
it was from one standpoint, a kind of breakdown, from another
it was a breaking open. When you come to the book of the Acts,
you can see that so clearly in spiritual reality.

Here is Jerusalem and here is satan's onslaught upon the
disciples in the killing of Stephen. It seems that his venom
was most poisonous against Stephen through those whom the Lord
Jesus Himself said were of their father the devil, "Ye are of
your father the devil... he was a murderer from the beginning"
here he is, through them, his children, showing his awful
animosity, his spleen, his hatred. "And they gnashed upon him
with their teeth and stopped their ears, and ran upon him!"
What a picture of hatred, of malice, devilish, satanic. Yes,
does it look like calamity, a tragedy, an end? "Then they that
were scattered abroad upon the death of Stephen, went
everywhere preaching the Word". Jerusalem smashed, but
Jerusalem scattered! It's just wonderful, it's almost
romantic.

Even the apostles were putting limits upon things. Poor James
had proposed his covenant of the Nazarite vow, to hold things
within certain limits. They had themselves no intention of
breaking down the wall of Israel; the Holy Spirit had and
precipitated it, firstly by the very death of Stephen. He
scattered them all abroad. And then, through Peter himself,
away up to Caesarea in the house of Cornelius. Poor Peter was
in the most em­barrassed position over that, but he said: "Who
was I? Who was I to resist the Holy Ghost?" The Holy Spirit
has got this matter in hand despite everything. "Unto the ends
of the earth" the Lord had said. Not Jerusalem alone, not
Samaria in addition, and not even all Judea; but "unto the
uttermost parts of the earth". The Lord had said that.
They were tardy and satan was opposed, but the Holy Spirit had
got the matter in hand, and so it was.

The book of the Acts is divided into two main sections. Up to
chapter 12, it is the establishment of the church in
Palestine, Jerusalem and throughout. From chapter 12 on, it's
"the uttermost parts of the earth" right to Rome. This is the
Acts of the Holy Spirit!

Now, dear friends, you see the application and the
implication. The significance of the Holy Spirit... you can
never be merely local, parochial, narrow, small in your view,
and vision, and interest, and concern, if you're a man of the
Spirit. No less a range and narrower horizon than the whole
of that for which God appointed His Son as heir of all
things! No less than that can be your concern if you're
under the government of the Holy Spirit. And if you are
really like that; if we are really like that, things
will happen. We will not have to try and make them happen,
organise to get them to happen - they will happen.

The Lord has this thing in hand. All that He needs is to have
us in hand, and utterly in hand. We need not worry. All
our problems, all our difficulties, everything giving us
trouble, will be solved when the Holy Spirit really has full
charge of us and of everything. The work will go on!